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|  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/1/2003 9:00 PM (GMT -6) |   | God (who IS love) loves Satan (a created, sentient being) unconditionally.
I expect at least 18 votes on this one, too.  | | Back to Top | | |
    |  John Earp Registered Member
 Date Joined Oct 2002 Total Posts : 1715 | Posted 8/2/2003 11:23 AM (GMT -6) |   | I think it is important to always keep in mind that when we speak of agape love, we are speaking of godly charity/benevolence, that is, unselfish goodwill, or the disposition to bless and not curse.
If God is truly benevolent towards all, then by definition he looks after the interests (highest good) of all.
With this in mind, it poses no problem to view God as acting in as truly loving (benevolent) a manner as possible towards Satan and all those who follow him (God's enemies).
With respect to people who are enemies of God, He seeks to win them by his love demonstrated through Christ on Calvary.
With respect to those who persist in rebellion against the love of God and fellow man (benevolence) the highest good for all is that they be imprisoned ultimately (hell). If God did not limit evil in this manner, He would not be truly benevolent towards all.
"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.
revivaltheology.net
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 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/2/2003 11:29 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
  |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/3/2003 8:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | Just making a note. There seems to be a HUGE disparity between the answers for the first poll question and this one. It seems that out of 19 people (currently), over 85% believe that God (who IS love) truly does love all sentient beings unconditionally. However, here that figure is in no way similar.
What's interesting about this is simply that all the second question is doing is specifying a CERTAIN sentient being rather than leaving it abstract. So, whence the big disparity?
1) God unconditonally loves all sentient beings. 2) Satan is a sentient being.
What's the conclusion of 1 and 2? 
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 |  trosie Registered Member
 Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 550 | Posted 8/3/2003 11:17 AM (GMT -6) |   | quote: We talk about inflation as though it were an entity just like like we talk about Satan as though it is also an entity. But it is not. Satan is ha-satan - the accuser, the adversary. It is that part of all of us that rejects God and each other. As such God does not unconditionally love Satan just as none of us loves inflation. Satan is bad, bad, bad. Pure evil. Why? Because it is something that by definition hurts created sentient beings that God DOES unconditionally love.
This view of yours would have in the past weirded me out but I have come to appreciate what I "think" you are saying. Someone recently pointed out to me that in Genesis 1 God FIRST created the light/dark and a few days later (day four) God created the sun, moon, and stars. What this person pointed out to me, and I have been chewing on, is the question of what was the light and dark if not what we consider day and night? Could it have been good/evil? Could this parallel to Genesis 3? From the beginning God created a way to allow creation to choose to receive his love or not.
Does God unconditionally love of ALL sentient beings? As I understand it God loves ALL of creation which thus would include the angels, yet despite God's unconditional love, half of the angels in heaven fell and decided against God. So too I think there are those who, despite God's love, will decide against God. God's unconditional love includes having freewill and freewill includes choice. I think God's plan was to create the light and dark to give us a choice and once our choice has finalized (death) then His love is conditioned into eternity. We either are transformed into God's likeness or we fall like half the angels did.
This has been burning inside me and I have been chewing on it for a while! trosie
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 |  Tom Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 10353 | Posted 8/3/2003 11:26 AM (GMT -6) |   | quote: Mephi: It seems that out of 19 people (currently), over 85% believe that God (who IS love) truly does love all sentient beings unconditionally. However, here that figure is in no way similar.
What's interesting about this is simply that all the second question is doing is specifying a CERTAIN sentient being rather than leaving it abstract. So, whence the big disparity?
1) God unconditonally loves all sentient beings. 2) Satan is a sentient being.
What's the conclusion of 1 and 2? 
Had you posted both questions symultaneously you would have probably gotten more consistent answers. Most people (well, I at least) don't normally think of Satan when I think about about "sentient beings." I answered "Yes" on the first one and "No" on the second. If I knew you were including Satan in the class of "sentient beings" on the first one, I would have answered "No."
Tom  | | Back to Top | | |
  |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/3/2003 1:34 PM (GMT -6) |   | My def.
What is a sentient being? An entity that embodies self-awareness and the ability to deliberate
Satan obviously fits into this category. | | Back to Top | | |
 |  GregBoyd Registered Member
 Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 1818 | Posted 8/3/2003 2:26 PM (GMT -6) |   | I think its a profound and disturbing question Meph.
I believe that God is love and that everything God does is love. So, I can't with consistency say that God HATES Satan. But I find I'm hesitant to say that God "loves" Satan. For a number of reasons, I can't go with Iconoclasts metaphorical view of ha satan. So I've got to find another way of reconciling my beliefs -- or just bite the bullet and say that God loves Satan.
Here's my way. * God loves each being he's created, and his love holds them into existence, as you hold Meph. * All sentient beings are created to participate in God's love, but sentient beings are free for love cannot be coerced. * God hates anti-love, precisely because God is love. * So long as a being has the potential to love -- to be what God created them to be -- he loves them, despite their anti-love. But a being can become so solidified against God -- in anti-love -- that their BEING is anti-love without remainder. Satan is the prototype of all such beings. * Now there is nothing left for God to love. His love now is expressed in mourning, for he loves what they COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE become. But in their actuality, they are living in contradiction to what God created them to be, and what God loved about them. * This doesn't qualify God's unconditional love anymore than saying God does love anti-love qualifes God's unconditional love. Indeed, I'm saying the exact same thing. * As to Iconclasts question about why God would continue to let ha satan wreak havoc, I answer that it is build into the principle of proportionality (TWT4). If Satan has x potential for love -- defined qualitatively and quantitatively over time -- he as x potential for evil -- defined qualitatively and quantitatively over time.
The remaining question, of course, is why God who only acts out of love would allow Satan or any sentient being to endure eternal hell. TWT4 may cover this, for it may be that the potential for eternal love requires the potential for eternal anti-love. If this argument fails, however, then my line of reasoning would logically require annihilation, so far as I can see.
GREAT QUESTION.
Doc When a being becomes irrevocably solidified against God - when they BEING is against God, not just their DOING -- "The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10. | | Back to Top | | |
 |  PotOnWheel Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 9890 | Posted 8/3/2003 5:25 PM (GMT -6) |   | | Maybe part of that problem is that we have formed a habit of thinking of "judgement" as being devoid of love. Working from the end of what might be a spectrum (not saying it is--I won't know), "judgment" can be the corrective for those soft-hearted enough to turn. That "judgement" was also "mercy." Maybe that is why some monks felt lead to pray even for the devil. | | Back to Top | | |
 |  PotOnWheel Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 9890 | Posted 8/3/2003 5:48 PM (GMT -6) |   | But here's a resource:
Angels and Evil Spirits http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/orthodox-faith/doctrine/angels-and-evil-spirits.html | | Back to Top | | |
 |  Iconoclast Registered Member
 Date Joined Oct 2001 Total Posts : 1227 | Posted 8/3/2003 5:57 PM (GMT -6) |   | Doc
For a number of reasons, I can't go with Iconoclasts metaphorical view of ha satan. So I've got to find another way of reconciling my beliefs -- or just bite the bullet and say that God loves Satan.
Iconoclast
One benefit of the metaphorical view is that you get to keep all the basic metaphorical mappings (conceptual logic) of Satan being an entity. You lose nothing in terms of "him" being the enemy - "him" being the anti-christ, anti-love, accuser, adversary, tempter and so on - but you gain a simple straightforward answer to the question of whether God love Satan - NO. God does not love that which hurts ALL the sentient creatures that He DOES love.
As an added bonus you get a simple straightforward understanding of why "going to war" against Satan is fought by focusing on our own selves - by conquering our own judgement and by loving others unconditionally.
I don't see that you lose anything by adopting this view. In fact, Jesus talking as though Satan was an entity can easily be understood by thinking about how Jesus would have talked about inflation at the time. God uses human language (which means metaphorical mappings) to communicate with us.
If Satan really was the accuser within each one of us and the very real force/pattern that that generates how WOULD Jesus talk about it? I submit that just like us He would adopt a "pattern as an entity" metaphorical mapping just like we do with inflation or any number of other things.
I don't see anything that you lose. The God at War metaphor would still work - we would just understand it more powerfully that God is really "at war" with our propensity to go against Him - our "accuser" - our judgement. And how does God "fight" that war? He dies on the cross for us to prove that He loves us and that we really ought to quit accusing and condemning each other. Doesn't this "fit" more accurately with our conceptualization of what is going on? Isn't this similar to the "drug war". Isn't the most powerful way to "win" the drug war to influence individuals to not take drugs? Which of course really means to help individuals find true life.
Everything to gain, nothing to lose by adopting "Satan as a metaphor" (which, of course, is really just another metaphorical mapping ).
Okay - Doc, would you at least agree that "Satan as a metaphor" is a better metaphorical "fit" with our understanding of reality than the "Satan as a sentient being" metaphorical mapping?
thanks, Iconoclast "The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/3/2003 5:58 PM (GMT -6) |   | Doc:
quote: * God hates anti-love, precisely because God is love. * So long as a being has the potential to love -- to be what God created them to be -- he loves them, despite their anti-love. But a being can become so solidified against God -- in anti-love -- that their BEING is anti-love without remainder. Satan is the prototype of all such beings. * Now there is nothing left for God to love. His love now is expressed in mourning, for he loves what they COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE become. But in their actuality, they are living in contradiction to what God created them to be, and what God loved about them.
There’s a problem here. To the extent God MOURNS for Satan, God is exhibiting LOVE for Satan. Period. You seem to be trying to make a disjunct between God loving Satan and God mourning Satan. There’s not one. God utterly hates anti-love and sin, but God doesn’t MOURN them. God lovingly mourns the PERSONS that are wholly solidified in them.
Sorry, Doc. You are AGREEING with me. Just bite the bullet and say that God unconditionally LOVES Satan.
What do you have to lose with this, anyway? 

PS: to Iconoclast. Did a metaphorical Satan tempt Jesus when he was in the wilderness...transporting Jesus to the top of the temple and all??
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
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 |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/3/2003 6:09 PM (GMT -6) |   | This needs to be stated very plainly:
God does NOT love sin and anti-love
God does love PERSONS who are solidified in sin and anti-love
This is simple as A B C, y'all... | | Back to Top | | |
      |  One Love Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2003 Total Posts : 13888 | Posted 8/3/2003 6:46 PM (GMT -6) |   | Sweet, Iconoclast. Thanks for the comment. I understand your perspective, even though I disagree. But it's good to know that the logical tightness of my argument (given my presuppositions of Satan as sentient being) is truly there.
So, anyone who DOES happen to believe that Satan is an sentient being...well... heh...
whew!  | | Back to Top | | |
 |  trosie Registered Member
 Date Joined Jul 2001 Total Posts : 550 | Posted 8/3/2003 10:05 PM (GMT -6) |   | POW quote: Maybe part of that problem is that we have formed a habit of thinking of "judgement" as being devoid of love. Working from the end of what might be a spectrum (not saying it is--I won't know), "judgment" can be the corrective for those soft-hearted enough to turn. That "judgement" was also "mercy." Maybe that is why some monks felt lead to pray even for the devil.
But, the bible has already laid out the plan of what will happen to all the evil and to those who have chosen hell. What would be the purpose to pray for the devil? Don't you think eventually a person's heart is solidified one way or the other? Here's a scripture that says "yes" -- people choose one way or the other until this decision is solidified.
John 3:18 "Whoever believes in the Son is not judged; but whoever does not believe has already been judged, because he has not believed in God's only Son. This is how the judgment works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Anyone who does evil things hates the light and will not come into the light, because he does not want his evil deeds to be shown up. But whoever does what is true comes to the light in order that the light may show that what he did was in obedience to God."
Iconoclastquote: I think you have this one sewn up tight Meph. You are right on the money. Except, of course, Satan is not REALLY a sentient being. We just speak about "him" that way because that is how humans conceptualize complex forces.
Your syllogism fails because your minor premise is mistaken.
So, God loves ALL sentient beings. God hates Satan
In 1John 4:4 Satan is referred to as a spirit. "But you belong to God, my children, and have defeated the false prophets, because the Spirit who is in you is more powerful than the spirit in those who belong to the world." I believe the spirit world has more to do with Genesis 1:1 -- the light and the darkness. Iconoclast, to me you are making so much sense!
quote: Semeia has made the observation that creation shows the pattern of God creating and then dividing. Creation followed by division. I believe this has something to do with the "epistemic distance" neccessary for us to have the ability to choose for or against God.
I agree and I am finding Genesis 1:1 to be profound in explaining what this probationary period of life is all about!
Hey, how does this type of verse fit into God's unconditional love?
Proverbs 3:32 "because the Lord HATES people who do evil, but he takes righteous men into his confidence."
This discussion is so interesting! trosie
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